Armonk slinks up behind him and puts an arrow to his neck. “Let her go,” he warns. “Or I’ll put this point through the back of your throat.”
“Oh, you think?” Jan sneers, not moving. “What if I don’t feel like it?” His hand inches steadily to his hip. Jan ducks as the arrow flies into the air and thwacks into the wall. Whirling around, Jan lifts the gun he just grabbed to Armonk’s face.
“No!” I crouch and then dive into the hall, as Blane leaps from behind the door and tackles Jan. They plunge down together as a gunshot explodes, piercing my eardrums. Impossibly loud, its bullet blasts a ragged hole in the floor near the window. The pistol slides toward me and I seize it, stuffing it inside my sock. I don’t want to use it, ever. Just need to keep it from Jan.
Blane and Jan continue to wrestle. Blane is burly, but Jan is wiry and fast, with legs that wind around Blane in and chop him with karate jabs. They’re both grunting and cursing. Meanwhile, Armonk has gotten back to his feet. He lets loose an arrow, which sinks into Jan’s arm. Jan yelps, his other arm yanking the arrow out and clutching at the wound.
Blane gains the upper hand at last. “Ruby, get me something to tie him with!”
Running into my room, I hide the gun under my mattress and Bea and I return with two dress belts. Blane winds one securely around Jan’s wrists and I bind the other around his ankles for good measure. We drag him to a chair by his bed and prop him there. Bea uses another piece of fabric as a tourniquet for his bleeding wound.
With Armonk’s arrow leveled steadily at Jan’s forehead, we finally get him talking. “They came one day and asked me for Thorn. I said hell no. I asked why they wanted him.”
“Who? Why?” I press.
“They said for some test, that’s all. I said I couldn’t just fork the kid over, that Armonk was playing chaperone with him.” Jan snickers as he eyes Armonk. Then he glares at the floor.
Blane prods him hard in the ribs. “Go on.”
“They told me they had money. Money talks.” Jan’s snort turns into a long, acidic laugh.
How dare he! I slap him in the face. “So if money talks, what does it say? Get on with it.”
He purses his lips as if he’s poised to spit in my face, but since Armonk’s arrow is still poking into his forehead and Blane is still hovering over him, Jan goes on, begrudgingly. “I told them they’d have to come here at night. They said to leave the bedroom window open.” He stops. “Don’t know what they did with the kid. They said they’d keep him sleeping. That they only needed to take a blood sample or some crap.”
I get up in Jan’s face, so close I smell his vinegary breath. “Who are they, and where do they live?”
He averts his face, as if he can’t stand my breath either, or my presence so close, pressuring him. It feels dangerously good to have the upper hand with this bully, and I can see how someone could easily get carried away with that feeling. I quash my urge to give him another hard slap just because I can. “Who’s they and where do they live?” I ask again.
“I don’t frying know, doesn’t it say on the card?”
“No.”
“Nevada knows. She was talking to that lady, Stazzi.”
“Stazzi? The Axiom judge?”
“That’s who gave me the card, Cult Girl.”
My stomach drops as I remember Jan talking to that pilot one day, to the transfer of what I thought was money. I’d assumed the pilot was a guy but he, or she, was wearing a helmet. So, that was Stazzi under the helmet? Did she come back again? I guess so! I gape at Bea, who’s cowering in the door, then at Blane, who’s staring back at me. Finally, I look over at Armonk.
“What does Nevada have to do with it?” Armonk asks Jan.
“She took half the money, fool.”
“I don’t believe you.” Armonk prods the arrow into Jan so sharply it puckers his skin.
“I know you hate to think of your favorite teacher that way,” Jan chides. “But the woman’s out for the money. She’s broke, greedy and weak.” Jan plays a confidence game, but sweat is trickling down either side of his neck.
My mind fixes on Nevada’s strange behavior at Dr. Varik’s and how she never told Armonk the doctor had come to Skull’s Wrath. I remember how she wasn’t so welcoming at first, and how she only had a feeble hold over Blane and Jan. She was awfully excited when Axiom was describing the prize money too. Nothing in those memories provides a shred of comfort.
“Let’s go talk to her then,” Armonk says quietly, fiercely.
“Talk to who?” Vesper appears in the doorway like some forgotten apparition. “What the hell, Jan?” Quicker than a flash sandstorm, Blane and Armonk bind her hands as well.
“Who the hell do you think you are, Peg Leg?” she hisses at Armonk.